Description:

"Competitive advantage for a company means not just matching or surpassing what competitors can do, but discovering what customers want and then profitably satisfying, and even exceeding, their expectations. As barriers to interregional and international trade have diminished and as access to goods and services has grown, customers can locate and acquire the best of what they want, at an acceptable price, wherever it is in the world. Under growing competition and, hence, rising customer expectations, a company's penalty for complacency becomes even greater.

A strategic tool to measure the importance of the customer's perceived value is value chain analysis. By enabling companies to determine the strategic advantages and disadvantages of their activities and value-creating processes in the marketplace, value chain analysis becomes essential for assessing competitive advantage."

Working in groups you will prepare a report analysing a selected industry value chain and a group of key companies within that industry.

Your report will identify the key value chain elements of the industry and by analysis demonstrate how each company uses these elements to create value and create and maintain sustainable competitive advantage.

1. General information

• Describe, in brief, the characteristics of the nominated industry and the histories of all three industry companies.
• Determine the key strategic differences that have impacted on the relative success of the companies. Provide two (2) examples of such strategic differences to support your analysis.

2. Value Chain Analysis

Using your understanding of how each company has directed their strategic planning to compete in different ways, identify where in the value chain each company has chosen to differentiate itself from its competitors. You may find the following headings useful in framing your analysis.

• Market opportunity analysis - Analysis of industry value drivers, resource implications and organisational alternatives

• Demand chain analysis - Customer value model (value drivers), value driver analysis, value proposition

• Supply chain analysis - Value production and coordination, value delivery and value servicing

3. Summary Analysis

A concluding analysis of how the three different companies have created value in different ways to deliver their individual competitive advantages.